Read an extract from Free Falling by Lyla Sage

Clarke Cartwright probably needed to get out more. She just had a lot to do. Running Toade’s Antiques was no small feat, especially considering that the roof was in shambles and half her merchandise was unsellable. But dealing with that felt easier than her other two options: third-wheeling with her best friend…again, or chatting it up with the ghost of her childhood crush’s father, who just can’t seem to leave her alone.

Leith Wilkes has spent his life preparing to take over his family’s farm. Well, he’s actually spent most of his life flirting, but now he’s ready to buckle down, which has nothing to do with an oddly specific clause that his dad left in his inheritance. Leith is pretty sure he’s the only one who knows about it…until Clarke drunkenly spills that she knows, too, along with a bunch of other Wilkes family secrets.

Leith starts to wonder if there’s more to Clarke than she lets on…and if his dad has something to do with it. And if she is keeping secrets of her own, maybe she won’t mind helping him with his.

MEET LEITH FROM FREE FALLING

What exactly had my plan here been? Show up on Clarke’s front porch and then what? I had nothing.

On my twenty-minute drive down here from Wilkes Farm, I tried to piece one together, but all I could do was hope that she wouldn’t still be at work. All the old shit at Toades gave me the heebie-jeebies. If I spent too long there, I always felt like something was a little too close to me. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Toades was a weird-ass place—even for this weird-ass town. So I figured it would be better to meet Clarke when she arrived home, surprise her before she even got settled. That way she wouldn’t have a chance to not answer the door once she figured out it was me. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I wasn’t really a plan guy. So I thought it was a good one.

I know. It sounds creepy as hell. But . . . desperate times and desperate measures and all that.

But now that I was here, I second-guessed everything.

Clarke’s truck had been parked outside, but there weren’t any lights on, so I assumed she walked to and from work today. There wasn’t even a porch light glowing. How would she feel, getting home after dark, to find me lurking in the shadows, waiting for her? I’d be lucky if I made it out of here without a punch to the jaw and a swift kick in the ass.

Clarke could hold her own with the best of them. I watched her clothesline a kid—with force—in gym when we were in junior high for saying some shit about Collins. Then, she gave him a honey-sweet smile, looked up at him through her lashes, said “whoops.” Then she helped him up. She was like that Sour Patch Kids slogan: “Sour. Sweet. Gone.”

She had never clotheslined me, personally, but I still always seemed to find a way to push her buttons. Teachers often sat us next to each other in the hopes that she might help me stay focused, but I liked to gab—still do—so that wasn’t exactly successful. But I liked sitting next to Clarke.

I liked to watch her eyebrows knit together when she was working on a tough math problem, the way she’d focus intently on something I could never see out the window when we had to work on an essay. It was safe to say that Clarke awed me. She was always so determined and so sure of her future. Even now, I am not either of those things.

The feeling wasn’t mutual. No matter what I did, I always seemed to get on Clarke’s nerves. She spoke to me through huffs and puffs and eye rolls, even when I was being nice. In eighth grade, I got the guts to bring her a jar of honey from the farm on Valentine’s Day. I thought I was being cute. Clarke did not. In response, all I got was a deep, eviscerating eye roll: the Clarke Cartwright specialty, but apparently that was reserved only for me. Everyone else got a friendly, softhearted, empathetic Clarke, but I had never been so lucky. I could charm just about anyone, except for her. And it drove me f***ing crazy.

Until three months ago. Clarke and I had been . . .

Free Falling by Lyla Sage was published by Quercus in PBO, Ebook, and Audio on 22 September 2026